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{{Short description|Historical labour rent in the Habsburg Empire}}
{{Distinguish|Robot|Patent}}
{{More citations needed|date=January 2010}}

The '''Robot Patent''' is an English-language scholarly term for the imperial decrees (patents) in the 1700s abolishing compulsory labor (robot{{efn|The word robot in this context is formed from the Slovak word ''robota'', meaning "labor" in literary Slovak.}}) of [[Serfdom|serfs]], issued by [[Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor]], who had carried out a register of all land with a division between [[peasant]] and [[Nobility|noble]] holdings.<ref name="Backhaus2012">{{cite book|author=Jürgen Georg Backhaus|title=The Liberation of the Serfs: The Economics of Unfree Labor|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ewJDxG4cCeMC&pg=PA20|date=31 May 2012|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-1-4614-0085-1|pages=20–}}</ref><ref name="Lee2005">{{cite book|author=Stephen J. Lee|title=Aspects of European History 1494-1789|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-f9_AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA185|date=20 June 2005|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-97227-2|pages=185–}}</ref>
Joseph II outlawed the buying of 'rustic' land by the nobility and at the same time giving the rusticalists security of [[tenure]]. His motive was to prevent the increase in 'dominical' land, which paid fewer [[tax]]es to the [[government]]. This led to the survival of the peasantry, with rustic land still having the robot. In 1789 it was abolished by Joseph II,<ref>{{cite book|last=Blanning|first=T. C. W.|title=The pursuit of glory: Europe, 1648-1815|year=2007|publisher=Penguin|isbn=0-670-06320-7|pages=161–3|chapter=4}}</ref>  but [[Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor|Leopold II]] restored it when his brother [[Joseph II]] died in 1790. The abolition of the Robot during the [[Revolutions of 1848]] broke the last legal tie which held the peasants to the land,<ref>{{cite book|title=History of the house of Austria ... , Volume 4|year=1881|publisher=G. Bell and sons|pages=lxx|author=William Coxe|chapter=7, The Revolution of 1848, from March to September}}</ref> and was seen as a great victory by the peasants.

When the Robot Patent was ended, the [[landlords]] had no interest in keeping peasantry to the soil. The smaller peasants sold their land and moved into the [[city|cities]]. The larger landlords could now run their great [[estate (land)|estates]] more economically. However the small gentry were ruined; they could not run estates even with the robot compensation as it was far too little, in contrast with Hungarian [[nobles]] who owned mills, [[paper]] factories, and [[coal mine]]s, all gained by the much larger compensation paid to them.<ref>{{cite book|author=A. J. P. Taylor|title=The Habsburg Monarchy|date=1947|publisher=Penguin|pages= 81}}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Maria Theresa]]
* [[Manorialism]]
* [[Serfdom]]
* [[Serfdom Patent (1781)]]

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

[[Category:Social history of Austria]]


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